The invention relates to a new method and apparatus for managing housekeeping contract services. Specifically, the invention includes using a computer system to measure and improve the quality and value of housekeeping services.
The growth of contract housekeeping services has accelerated in recent years as property managers move away from having a permanent housekeeping staff to instead having outsourced, contract housekeeping services. It is important and difficult to manage these services, particularly if there is a large number of different types of buildings to be maintained. Evaluating the services is equally difficult as the different buildings require different amounts and types of attention.
The generic concept of requiring quality control over housekeeping services is well-established. Typically, this quality control includes inspecting the performance of housekeeping services, filling out an inspection form and manually maintaining these inspection form records. The inspection forms are standardized and, in practice, do not accurately address the inspection requirements for specific buildings, because each building is different. The forms are not customized for the specific requirements of each building.
The usefulness of the files being manually maintained is also questionable. Documents can be misplaced or misfiled. It is difficult to manually extract useful information from the files. Many forms allow substantial room for subjective evaluation, so it is difficult to compare evaluations performed by different people and at different buildings. Further, manual files do not allow convenient positive or negative feedback as to performance, because they are difficult to decipher and review. Finally, because information is difficult to extract from manual files, substantive reviews are infrequent. There is no incentive to do quality work if there is no feedback.
Without careful oversight and management of housekeeping services, the quality of those services can decline. This results in increased costs to obtain quality work. In addition to rising costs for housekeeping services, the declining quality of services can also be costly as the maintenance is neglected. This can result in increased future costs for remedial steps that must be taken to repair facilities broken as a result of the neglected duties.